The Reserve
Overview
The reservoir — a protected freshwater supply that Ironclad guards with the intensity other corporations reserve for data centers. The dam and its surrounding watershed are fenced, patrolled, and monitored by sensors that detect chemical contamination, biological intrusion, and unauthorized human presence with equal alarm. Clean water is the Sprawl's scarcest resource, and whoever controls the Reserve controls a leverage point that transcends corporate politics. The surrounding hills are green, quiet, and forbidden — a pocket of pre-Cascade wilderness preserved not by environmental concern but by strategic value. The Longline runs along the Reserve's western edge, and The Great Rift's fault trace is visible in the exposed hillside where the reservoir's drainage has stripped the topsoil.